The door groaned open again.
It had been weeks. Or maybe forever.
Violet barely moved now when the hinges screamed. The sound had become part of the rhythm of her world — the drip from the wall, the flicker of the lamp, the pulse in her own throat.
Boots clicked against the stones. Perfume, cold and bitter like burned flowers, crept in before the voice did.
"Still alive?"
Velanor's tone held amusement, the kind that made the air heavier instead of lighter.
Violet didn't answer. Her lips barely remembered how to form words.
The princess stepped closer, the hem of her black gown whispering across the floor. Her shadow cut the light in two. "You look surprised," she said softly. "Did you think silence would make me forget you existed?"
Violet's gaze lifted slowly, unfocused. "Why are you here?" Her voice sounded like paper tearing.
"To bring you news," Velanor said. "You should be grateful."
The word grated.
Velanor paused before her, hands clasped. "Your… companion. The half-blood wolf who dared walk beside you. He's been caught."
The world seemed to tilt.
Violet blinked, once, twice, but the words didn't change shape. Her stomach twisted; her pulse stuttered.
Velanor smiled faintly. "You remember him, don't you? Tall, silver hair, eyes like ash, loud in his righteousness. You two looked almost loyal."
She crouched down, her tone lilting, delicate. "He screamed your name when they took him."
Violet's chest burned. "You're lying."
Velanor chuckled. "You always think I'm lying. It's charming."
The room seemed smaller now. The air clawed at her lungs.
Velanor tilted her head, watching. "I could show you the body," she said lightly. "But it's such an ugly thing now. The guards can't stand the smell. Better to let you remember him as he was, hm?"
The sentence hung between them, bright as a blade.
Something in Violet cracked.
The lamp's flame shivered. Her breath came short, uneven, almost animal. Words formed and died behind her teeth.
No.
He can't be.
He promised to come back.
She shook her head slowly, the chains clinking against the wall.
Velanor stood, looking faintly amused. "Ah, disbelief. The sweetest stage."
Violet's vision blurred. Her mind filled with flashes — Vael's crooked smile, the way he called her "little storm" when she frowned too much, his voice cutting through the snow that night they left Eiran's forge.
Gone.
It couldn't be real.
Something deep inside her began to twist, slow and dark. A storm without wind, just pressure, curling inward until it hurt to breathe.
Velanor spoke again, distant now. "You could thank him, you know. His defiance bought you another month of life."
Violet lifted her head. The light caught her eyes — hollow, fever-bright. "Why are you doing this?"
Velanor's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Because it reminds me I exist."
The princess turned and left, her perfume trailing like poison smoke.
The door closed. The silence returned.
---
Days, maybe weeks passed. Time became a fluid thing. Sometimes Violet slept; sometimes she just lay there with her eyes open, watching the lamp breathe.
The words replayed endlessly. He screamed your name when they took him.
Her mind, once full of color, had narrowed into shades of grey. Thoughts moved sluggishly, half-formed, circling back on themselves until she couldn't tell memory from imagination.
Sometimes she saw Vael standing at the door. Sometimes she heard Maria's laughter, soft and far away. Sometimes she felt Garrett's hand brushing her hair.
But each vision ended in the same silence.
She had started whispering to the walls. Prayers, curses, fragments of lullabies. Anything to keep the dark from swallowing her.
Then one morning — or night, she couldn't tell — she woke with tears dried on her face and a single thought that felt like fire in her chest:
They will remember me.
It wasn't defiance. It was grief, so vast it looped back into calm.
She spoke to the air, to no one. "I hate you, Velanor."
Her voice didn't tremble this time. "And you, Calla. I hate you most."
The words felt strange, heavy, true.
For months she repeated them. Like prayers. Like promises.
When the lamp flickered, she whispered them.
When the guards dropped her food through the slot, she whispered them.
When sleep came, she dreamed of repeating them until her throat bled.
The world shrank into that rhythm.
Hate. Breathe. Wait.
---
Her twenty-first year came without ceremony.
No one remembered. No one came. The lamp burned weaker than before, its glass fogged with soot.
She marked the day only because her reflection in the water pan had changed — thinner, sharper, the skin beneath her eyes darker. The violet of her irises had dulled, almost grey.
Her body was whole, but her mind felt hollowed out.
They had broken her without breaking her bones.
That day, she didn't whisper. She just sat, still as a forgotten statue.
The door opened sometime after the light had dimmed again.
Velanor entered alone.
For the first time, there was no smile. Only that faint, superior calm — the kind of mercy that came after satisfaction.
"So quiet," Velanor murmured. "Even your silence is dull now."
Violet didn't look up.
Velanor stepped closer, her boots echoing softly. "They said you stopped speaking weeks ago. Is that true?"
No answer.
She crouched, studying Violet's face. "Your eyes used to burn. Now they're just… empty. Like all the others."
Still nothing.
Velanor sighed. "A pity. I liked you better when you bit back."
She reached out and brushed a stray lock of silver hair from Violet's face. The gesture was almost gentle.
"Do you know what mercy looks like?" Velanor asked quietly. "It looks like me deciding you've served your purpose."
Violet blinked slowly, her gaze finally rising to meet hers.
Velanor smiled faintly. "Death is the only gift I have left to give."
The words fell softly, like the closing of a door.
For a moment, neither moved. The lamp hissed, a moth brushed against the stone, and the silence folded in.
Violet's lips parted. A breath, no more than that, escaped.
Not a plea. Not even a word.
Just sound.
Velanor's expression softened in mock sympathy. "Don't worry. You'll be remembered… as proof of what mercy costs."
She stood, turned, and moved toward the door. The light followed her until only her outline remained in the frame — tall, perfect, terrible.
Then she was gone.
The lock clicked.
Violet sat there, the echo of her footsteps fading like a pulse receding from a dying heart.
She thought of Vael, of Eiran, of Maria's laugh, of Garrett's calloused hands. She thought of the road and the sound of the carriage wheels turning endlessly.
Then she thought of nothing at all.
---
Somewhere in the corridors above, Velanor spoke to Calla.
"She'll be gone before dawn," she said.
Calla's burned face twitched. "Is that mercy?"
Velanor didn't answer. She only smiled faintly. "It's silence. That's all that matters."
Down below, the lamp in Violet's cell sputtered once, then twice, before dying completely.
Darkness reclaimed the room.
And in that darkness, where sound and time no longer existed, something shifted inside her chest — a faint pulse, too weak to be anger, too strange to be life.
Perhaps memory.
Perhaps something waiting for the right moment to wake.